Tokyo—The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., today announced that it would support a car each from two teams in the 70th 24 Hours of Le Mans race. The grueling endurance race will be held for two days from June 15 on the Sarthe Circuit in Le Mans, France.

Began in 1923, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is a race with established tradition and status and known for its extremely harsh conditions enforced on both drivers and cars. The cars participating in the Le Mans 24 Hours race are largely categorized into the Proto class (LMP900/LMP675) and Grand Touring (GT) class (LM-GTS/LM-GT). The Proto class cars are designed specially for racing, while the GT class cars are the same models as those sold in the market. Yokohama Rubber will supply its tires to two teams: Seikel Motorsport and Team Taisan Advan. Both teams will use Porsche GT3R and make entry into the LM-GT class.

Yokohama Rubber has developed tires for the Le Mans competition based on its tires for the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship. Reinforced wear-resistance capabilities of these tires achieved satisfactory results in preliminary practice sessions in last May. The company provides the two teams with a total of approximately 600 tires: the YOKOHAMA A005 for dry road conditions and the YOKOHAMA A006 for wet road conditions. Both models are sized at 250/650R18 for the front and 280/680R18 for the rear.

At last year's Le Mans, Yokohama supported a total of five cars from three teams that participated in the LM-GT class, in which Porsche 911GT3R from Seikel Motorsport won. It was the second consecutive winning for a Yokohama-supported car from the previous year when a Porsche from Team Taisan Advan won the same class. Last year, another car using Yokohama tires followed the winning team in the second place. Also, other two cars using Yokohama tires completed the tough race with rapidly changing circuit conditions due to unstable weather, while 27 cars out of a total of 48 entries withdrew from the race.

Yokohama Tire-Mounted Car List for Le Mans